by Lauren Marks
Varley, Rosemary. “Substance or Scaffold: The Role of Language in Thought.” In Language Disorders in Children and Adults: New Issues in Research and Practice, edited by Valerie Joffe, Madeline Cruice, and Shula Chiat, 39–53. Hoboken: Wiley, 2008.
———. “Evidence for Cognition Without Grammar from Casual Reasoning and ‘Theory of Mind’ in an Agrammatic Aphasic Patient.” Current Biology 10, no. 12 (2000): 723-726.
———. “Science Without Grammar: Scientific Reasoning in Severe Agrammatic Aphasia.” In Cognitive Basis of Science edited by Peter Camithos, Stephen Stitch, and Michael Siegal, 99–116. Cambridge University Press, 2002, 103, 114.
———. “Reason Without Much Language,” Language Sciences Journal 46 (2014): 232–44.
Language is a convenient and essential tool to academics and writers. Its descriptive qualities make it immensely alluring, which may be the main reason why so many people (including me, occasionally) tend to believe that language does the heavy lifting in the thought process. But Varley finds the cognitive model of language lacking. She believes language certainly can play a role in our thinking when we’re neurologically healthy, and we use it and rely on it because it is efficient to do so. However, Varley has seen that language is not nearly as involved in reason, learning, and decision-making as many people assume. She’s been working with people living with aphasia, and she observes how they rely on other inner resources when their linguistic skills have disappeared. For this reason, she believes that language is more like a scaffold. We can see that kind of structure, and since it is the most visible part of the building, we might mistake it for the building itself. But that doesn’t make it so.
As far as the language/mind debate is concerned, I think elements of many theoretical paradigms put forth are all valuable in our attempt to answer ever-elusive questions. I like the communicative approaches (expressed by Steven Pinker and the Universal Grammar camp) and the cognitive approaches (represented by people like Boroditsky, Spelke, Fernyhough, etc.). But I am very glad that I was exposed to the supra-communicative model that people like Varley represent, too. When we have language at our disposal, we rely on its support, so much so that it feels as if it holds up our entire balance of thought. But if—or when—our language is removed from the facade? Our structure can still stand.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Including supplemental sources
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Basque Proverb
Schacter, Daniel. The Seven Sins of Memories. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001. 139 (emphasis mine), 141.
PART ONE
Chapter 1
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007.
Mortality and morbidity rates for ruptured aneurysms are not exactly static, and somewhat affected by the time of procedure used during the neuro-intervention. The Brain Aneurysm Foundation (www.bafound.org) will have up-to-date statistics.
Chapter 2
More info on aphasia classification can be found in:
Davis, G. Albyn. Aphasiology: Disorders and Clinical Practice. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2007.
Chapter 3
Moss, Scott. Injured Brains of Medical Minds: Views from Within, compiled and edited by Narinder Kapur 83–84. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 83–84.
Morin, Alain. “Self-awareness Deficits Following Loss of Inner Speech: Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s Case Study.” Consciousness and Cognition (2008).
Taylor, Jill Bolte. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey. New York: Viking, 2006.
For more on inner/private speech, consult this overview from Simon McCarthy-Jones and Charles Fernyhough, “The varieties of inner speech: Links between quality of inner speech and psychopathological variables in a sample of young adults.” Consciousness and Cognition 20 (2011): 1586–1593
Chapter 5
Matsuoka, Takashi. Cloud of Sparrows. London: Hutchinson, 2003.
Chapter 6
Basic overview of Theory of Mind (ToM). The “Sally-Anne test” (also called “False Belief Tests”) is a famous example of ToM testing, which was partially pioneered by Simon Baron-Cohen, Alan M. Leslie, and Uta Frith in 1985. The test was to establish a child’s ability to attribute false beliefs to others (i.e. beliefs that differ from what the child knows to be true). These tests have been conducted extensively in Developmental Studies.
PART TWO
Chapter 1
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. “Mock Confessional.” These Are My Rivers. New York: New Directions, 1973.
Chapter 3
Sleep studies and their relationship to memory consolidation are well reported on. This book provides a useful overview:
Carlson, Neil. Physiology of Behavior. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2010.
PART THREE
Chapter 1
Ruth Lesser and Lesley Milroy write extensively about aphasia and linguistics in Linguistics and Aphasia: Psycholinguistic and Pragmatic Aspects of Intervention. Routledge, 1993.
Schuell, Hildred. “The treatment of aphasia.” In Aphasia theory and therapy: Selected lectures and papers of Hildred Schuell, edited by L.F. Sies, 137–52. Baltimore: University Park Press, 1974.
Szymborska, Wisława. “The Three Strangest Words.” Translated by Joanna Trzeciak. Athens, OH: New Ohio Review, 2009.
Chapter 5
Jack, Albert. Red Herrings and White Elephants: The Origins of the Phrases We Use Everyday. Kent: John Blake Publishing Ltd, 2007.
Chapter 9
Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex. New York: Picador, 2007.
Chapter 11
To find a comprehensive overview about working memory and executive functions see: Gazzamiga, Michael S., Richard Ivry, and George Mangun. Cognitive Neuroscience: The Biology of Mind. New York; London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2014.
Chapter 13
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” Nature: Addresses and Lectures. Archived at Ralph Waldo Emerson texts online, http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature1.htm.
For more information on Emerson’s aphasia, see: Shenk, David, The Forgetting, Alzheimers: Portrait of An Epidemic. New York: Doubleday, 2001.
Chapter 14
Hemingway, Ernest. “A Soldier’s Home.” In Our Time. New York: Scribner, 1996.
Chapter 15
Casanova; Giacomo Girolamo. The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt. Translated by Arthur Machen. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; III edition, 2012.
Chapter 18
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Edited by John B. Carroll, Stephen C. Lennsen, and Penny Lee. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1956.
Levinson, Stephen C. “Foreword.” Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 2012.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow, 1994.
Schacter, Daniel. The Seven Sins of Memory. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Chapter 19
Since sign language is spatial in nature (and language reasoning and spatial reasoning often live in totally distinct parts of the brain), it might be assumed that deaf people who experience aphasia would do so in a different way to hearing people. But sign language is much more than simple gestures, it is a proper, grammatical language, with all of the identifying characteristics of one (which is discussed at length in Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct). In fact, deaf people with aphasia manifest their language deficits in very similar ways as hearing people. There have been fascinating studies done regarding this point. Neil Carlson writes about this in Physiology of Behavior (Boston; London: Allyn & Bacon, an imprint of Pearson, 2010) in a section called “Aphasia in Deaf People,” (501–502). Oliver Sacks writes about this in The Mind’s Eye (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010).
Keller, Helen. The Story of My Life. New York: Bantam Classic, 1988.
Chapter 28
“6 steps of a Brain Surgery�
�� partially follows the Mayfield Clinic for Brain & Spine “Craniotomy overview” offered at http://www.mayfieldclinic.com/PE-Craniotomy.html.
For more information about the extremely long history of craniotomies (also called “trepanation), please consult: “Ephraim George Squier’s Peruvian Skull.” In Trepanation: History, Discovery, Theory, edited by Robert Arnott, Stanley Finger, C.U.M. Smith. Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers/CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2003.
PART FOUR
Chapter 1
Dickinson, Emily. The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Chapter 3
For more information on phrenology, there was a fascinating article in the Smithsonian Magazine called “Facing a Bumpy History,” October 1997, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/facing-a-bumpy-history-144497373/
Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself. New York: Viking Press, 2007.
Freud, Sigmund. On Aphasia: A Critical Study. Translated by Erwin Stengel. New York: International Universities Press, 1953, originally published in 1891.
A companion book is Greenberg, Valerie D., Freud and His Aphasia Book: Language and the Sources of Psychoanalysis. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Information on localization/neuroplastic can be found in Ramachandran, V. S. The Tell-Tale Brain. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
Chapter 7
Boroditsky, Lera. “How Language Shapes Thought,” Scientific American (2011): 63, 65.
Boroditsky, Lera and Jesse Prinz. “What Thoughts Are Made Of.” In Embodied Grounding: Social, Cognitive, Affective, and Neuroscientific Approaches, edited by Gün R. Semin, Eliot R. Smith, 98–115. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Pinker, Steven. Quoted in “She explores the world of language and thought” by Barbara Moran. Boston Globe: November 18, 2003.
Winawer, Jonathan, Nathan Witthoft, Michael C. Frank, Lisa Wu, Alex R. Wade, and Lera Boroditsky. “Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Discrimination.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104, no. 19 (2007): 7780-785.
Chapter 9
Mee, Charles. The Bacchae 2.1, http://www.charlesmee.org/bacchae.shtml: 48.
Shukert, Rachel. Have You No Shame? And Other Regrettable Stories. New York: Villard, 2008.
Shukert, Rachel. Everything is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Tour. New York: Harper Perennial, 2010.
Chapter 10
For a great overview of neurology and the desire to self-narrate, see Gottschall, Jonthan. The Storytelling Animal. New York: Mariner Books, 2013.
McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
A lot of what is known about procedural memory owes a great debt to the study of brain patient Henry Molaison, known as HM for many years. A brief overview of his case can be found in: Squire, Larry R. “The Legacy of Patient H.M. for Neuroscience.” Neuron 61, no. 1 (2009): 6-9.
Chapter 16
Fernyhough, Charles. A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist’s Chronicle of His Daughter’s Developing Mind. New York: Penguin Group, 2008.
Krulwich, Robert and Jad Abumrad. “Words That Change the World.” Radiolab. NPR (2010). http://www.radiolab.org/story/91728-words-that-change-the-world/.
Lordat, Jacques. In Injured Brain of Medical Minds: Views from Within, compiled and edited by Narinder Kapur. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997: 71.
McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
Hermer-Vazquez, Linda, Elizabeth Spelke, and Alla Katsnelson. “Sources of Flexibility in Human Cognition: Dual Task Studies of Space and Language.” Cognitive Psychology 39 (1999): 3–36.
Chapter 17
Ackerman, Diane. One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
West, Paul. The Shadow Factory. Lumen Books, 2008.
Chapter 21
Lennon, Robert J. Pieces for the Left Hand. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2009.
Chapter 23
Williams, Tennesse. Orpheus Descending. Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1998.
Epilogue
Matsuoka, Takashi. Cloud of Sparrows. London: Hutchinson, 2003.
AFTERTHOUGHTS / SUGGESTED READING
This quote from Judith Butler was taken from the day she was receiving her honorary doctorate from McGill University, Commencement Speech, May 30, 2013.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many challenges in putting together a memoir, and not the least of them is writing about people you personally know, and who were unaware that their words or actions would later be put into a permanent record. For that reason, among others, I want to thank everyone in my life who appears in this book, sometimes under their name, sometimes under pseudonyms. It should go without saying, but I still feel compelled to mention that the remarkable people represented in this story are only fractions of who they actually are outside of these pages.
Especially after my brain aneurysm’s rupture, I have been a difficult machine to maintain, and the number of people I really should thank here far exceeds the space provided, so consider this a highly abbreviated list. Thanks to my mother and father for their ingenuity and patience, their creativity and hope, and their massive amounts of love. To my brother, who is one of my favorite people on the planet, who encouraged me to keep writing this book even though it focused on some of the crappiest parts of perhaps the crappiest year in his life. And to Helen Tihista Marks, my beloved grandmother, who passed away soon after my thirtieth birthday. With her passion for reading, it would have been great to have handed her my own book and hear everything she had to say about it.
With great admiration, I want to thank all my doctors, surgeons, and therapists, because I simply would not be alive without them. I also want to commend the skill and expertise of the team at The Keck School of Medicine, including Dr. Giannotta, Dr. Teitelbaum, Dr. Amar, and Dr. McCleary, and also the team at Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, especially Dr. Al-Shahi Salman, Anne Rowe, my neuroradiologist, and all of the nurses. This huge appreciation equally extends to Dr. Russin and the staff at Justine Sherman and Associates, especially Justine and Alicia.
I do not think there is any way that I can give too much praise to BJ Lockhart, Laura Stinger, Rachel Shukert, and Stephen Brackett—my absolute favorite rapscallions and lifelong friends. Thanks also to Emily Abramson, Betsy Sinclair, Tara Gellene, Kaya Chwals, Shafer Hall, Jason Lew, James West, Albert Lee, Natascha Bussinger, Leslye Headland, Jody Lew, Karen Azarnia, Heather Christian, Catherine Anyango, Alan Chan, Michael Silverstone, Gloria and Russ Kinsler, Darrel Meyers, and everyone from the oatmeal group, my extended family members who appear in this book and those who don’t, and to all the individuals mentioned in these pages who I believe would like to remain fully anonymous. Special thanks to the whole Paterson family (and to Abigail Browde for introducing me to them in the first place)—my parents still call them “the angels of Edinburgh.” To Virlyn Grant, my grandmother’s best friend, the only person who ever rivaled my grandmother’s fanatical devotion to libraries, and who has helped keep my grandma alive for me. And to Khanisha Foster, a steadfast friend through it all.
Thank you to all of my teachers and/or readers (too numerous to list!) who have been invaluable to me, but especially: Michael Krass, Sylvia Sukop, Dane Charbeneau, Christine Hauser, Ellen Slezak, Tina Pohlman, Kirsa Rein, Les Plesko, Branislav Jakovljevic, Steven Drukman, Keith Apfelbaum, Laura Cushing-Harries, Kate Britten, Saskia Vogel, and Zia Haider Rahman. Each one of them gave me clarity and insight at many steps along the way, and in some cases influenced me before this book was even imagined. Many thanks
to Bryce Howard and Amy Friedman, because no one would have seen this book if you hadn’t seen it first. And to Stephanie Douglass, who read many incarnations of my manuscript but also introduced me to my husband, too. She gets some extra points for that!
My gratitude to Catherine Jackson and Stephen Sinclair at the Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences at Cal State Northridge. Also thanks to Liz Seckel and Vivian Chang at the Brain and Cognition Lab at UC San Diego, and to V.S. Ramanchandran, whose work never ceases to amaze me. To the UCL Communication Clinic, Cathy Sparkes, and to Rosemary Varley specifically—thanks for making this book even more complicated in the best possible ways. In my years in London, I was very lucky to have stumbled into Connect, an organization that deals exclusively with aphasic issues, and exposed me to an ingenious model of self-advocacy at work—thanks to all of the staff, volunteers, and members, but especially Alan Hewitt and Anita Foster.
I am indebted to Bonnie Nadell, my extraordinary agent, who believed in this manuscript’s potential and was patient as it/I found its/my voice. Also thanks to Millicent Bennett, the brave editor who brought my work in progress to Free Press/Simon & Schuster initially, and to the incomparable Julianna Haubner, who took over this book and always found a few extra hours in the day for me, and shepherded this manuscript to completion. I couldn’t have done this without you.
I have received generous support from some wonderful organizations, grants, and residencies. Huge thanks to the PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Program (especially to Michelle Franke, Libby Flores, Aimee Liu, and all of my fellow EVs from that year); the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA); VCCA France (with special gratitude to the Francis Heiner and Carole Weinstein grants); Ragdale; the Atlantic Center for the Arts (especially Richard McCann); the Literary Women of Long Beach; the Corporation of Yaddo; and the entire Bread Loaf Community—especially Michael Collier, Ann Hood, Melissa Febos, Carmiel Banasky, and all my fellow waiters. These unique arenas gave me an opportunity to improve my work, be inspired by the art being generated around me, and make so many friends in the process.